Not sure if this has been mentioned, but it should be more likely for weapons to knock out certain rooms s the player has to reassign crew to repair them during battle.

It'd be good to have a global energy resource as well, like in FTE. So the player assigns power to the various systems during the battle, choosing which receive more power. This is classic Star Trek stuff and opens up a lot of tactical depth for a relatively simple mechanic - "full power to shields!"

Also like in FTE the player should be able to escape from fights, possibly paying a penalty in tokens to do so.

To make things more rock paper scissors there should be a much greater variety in weapon types. The idea of ones that overload shields is interesting, but can be taken even further. What about ones which spread fire but cause no damage, or overload electrical systems, damage hull but not shields and so on. I agree with the above post that you should' remove the mini games as well, they're compelling!

Maybe consider allowing the player to direct their attacks as well, for example at the engines, weapons systems and so on.

Weapon ideas:
Biobomb - causes no damage to ship but damages shields, causes heavy damage to crew
EMP cannon - damages shields but causes no hull damage, disables ship systems instead
Microwaver - low damage but spreads lots of fire on the ship
Goliath - each time it is fired the player can choose to save he firing for later, the more that are combined the more damage done when the firing is finally confirmed
Hull cracker - more damage to outer hull, low damage to internal ship
Stasis gun - freeze affected areas of enemy ship, leaving them disabled but also impossible to damage for a period of time, along with any crew contained in the AOE
Sonic disrupter - bypasses shields but causes low damage

Having a greater variety of weapons should extend to more types of room as well - the player should be able to construct various types of tactic in order to win. More varieties in the crew abilities and shop types would also help this.

Some room ideas;
Additional generator- more power for ship systems
Cloaking device - cannot attack or be attacked when turned on, consumes more energy
Security droid garage - droids help defend the ship when boarded
Security control - ability to lock doors (they must be attacked to be opened)
Advanced sensor array - see cloaked vessels
Combat computer - no direct effect, but has 6 research slots available affecting various ship systems
Teleporter - I assume this will be included for the away team update anyway...
Shuttle bay - a cheaper alternative to the above but only for planets, not ship to ship invasions

Finally, it'd be cool for the crew member types to be better at different things. Some being natural engineers, warriors or scientists.

I ended up with too many crew members as well, so a way to trade those in would be good.

Well, this is my first post and I have tried to read the other suggestions but if I repeat and idea please forgive it.

Ok first of I think that the Bridge is the area needing the most improvement. I think right now the abstract way it improves the overall efficiency of the ship is accurate but leave a lot of room for flavor and strategy. In Star Trek the bridge crew is usually maned by the cream of the crop but right now the bridge is more or less where you keep your tac officers for repelling enemy crews when there is no one to repel. I think that the bridge needs to have specific rolls to have filled Helm (To allow the maneuvering mention in previous posts) OPS/Sensors (to help with weapon accuracy and to allow for effective control/comms with boarding parties on enemy ships, and to help with accurate transports over) Command ( to allow for the overall effective bonus and to allow the captain to give general commands for AI to follow) and Tactical to manage weapons....

I think the problem with allowing the ships to maneuver into different positions can be resolved by simply putting a dividing line between the ships to show that they are in different actual locations. In the shows the main screen shows many different camera angles and allows the front of the enemies to always be "on screen". You could then have a "mini-map" to show the actual relative positions of the ships.

I think that another possibility is to allow for weapons to fire different attack types. I think you could have multiple torpedo types, explosive, EMP, radiation, Homing ect.... The laser could have a wide effect which would be good against shields and cause more overall damage and a focused mode which would allow it to breach the hull and damage specific systems. And so on... I also think that once you allow for the above mentioned maneuvering each weapon could have various firing arcs making it important to have weapons installed in the right spots and to maneuver the ship into a good spot.

The maneuvering and helm officer should do away with the need for a dodge room I would replace it with a Tractor Beam room which would allow you to try to "Lock" the enemy ship into a specific relative position with the beam instead of just maneuvering.

Ok.. so the other idea that I had was to allow the captain to issue orders to the crew which will more automatically be carried out without needing as much micromanagement. One such order could be a "fire at will"order which would allow you to let the tactical officer worry about firing the weapons while you manage defense against enemy boarding parties or command you own away team. This system would make choosing a good commander for the ship important and encourage keeping the captain on the bridge. Maybe there could be the same type of command role required to send an away team, meaning you would need a good "number one" to command the team or ship. I guess this would mean the need for a leadership stat which would affect the AI's ability to execute the command orders.

I also left out that the relative ship position system in my other post allows for shields to be divided into quarters so that you could add power to the exposed side and leave a flank open.

Also I think that if including mini games or not is such a big issue then it could be included as an optional feature so those who want can have it and those who don't can turn it off. I personally think it makes the chances of a hit too high, once you master the mini game you will rarely miss which reduces the fun and the feeling that you are a captain in command.

Wow, so folks aren't 'really' voting are they. I've just gone through and voted for those with Merit.

For me, I think the two most important changes that are needed are (as mentioned) specific attack areas on enemy ships and more 'complex' mini-games to do this.

Take, for example, the Torpedo crosshairs... The mini-game itself is good, but very tap focused. Instead, this could be a 'Mouse movement' based game where you need to adjust the mouse position to get as close to 100% match as possible. If you haven't seen it, Check out the 'Mining' mechanics in Galaxy on Fire. Something similar to that (with background rampable difficulty) could really make this tricky but rewarding.

For me though, you need to introduce something interesting for targeting specific areas of enemy ships... One thing we haven't got now is the concept of 'scanning'..

The interface currently displays simple information about the ship you're facing so you can 'vaguely' attempt to plan your attack... sadly, it's just 'fire all the things' right now. What if you had a new room for 'Scanning' that would allow you (with subsequent attempts) to reveal more information about the rooms on an enemy ship?

1 token + Mini-game to target scanning area + success = Reveal a room and new 'target' area for weapons.

The mini-game in this case could be 'Clear the interference'. You get a vague shape of the enemy ship, and you can focus you pointer/finger/whatever at a specific portion of this shape. As you spend more time there the interference clears and you reveal an internal map of the ship. This would need to be a combination of click and movement... Think like adjusting a radio dial, where the mouse is used to focus an area and 'some other key combination common to the game' is used to turn the dial..

There has already been talk on Team management and Ship boarding. I'm looking forward to them... I will, however, say that the Armoury needs the ability to upgrade individual weapons to kit out your boarding parties with. Each 'room' should allow for the production of 'something' useful to a boarding party (shield room = personal sheilds, Healing Room = Last chance med-kit (revives half health)). Interestingly, if this was an additional 'token' production choice you could stock up and spend tokens on the upgrades you wanted for 'Tactical Upgrades' (not just upgrading rooms and hiring crew - might need an additional row in the token chest to allow for them though).

Tie this into Crew Skill and you could build in some very complex tactical planning (i.e. anyone can use the UberShot9000 but if they're not proficient in 'Red' then they are prone to friendly fire)

Thinking on this a little more, if you take the above but add a 'Cargo Bay' and allow 'Engineering' to work on upgrades, that would solve the issue of an Armoury (that's highly under utilized) and the Token Chest being overloaded. Separate Inventory for the Cargo Bay with (upgradable) slots for weapons, tech, boosts etc etc

I'd like to see weapons, among others rooms, require some interaction between each other. For instance, an automated ammo room that triggers automatic travel of an engineer to the weapon room and back after firing. (Not manual activation - I see enough micro in play as is, honestly.) This would set up a supply line you have to defend, and keeping particular hallways well-defended would be critical to your combat capability.

[quote="Lurkily"]I'd like to see weapons, among others rooms, require some interaction between each other. For instance, an automated ammo room that triggers automatic travel of an engineer to the weapon room and back after firing. (Not manual activation - I see enough micro in play as is, honestly.) This would set up a supply line you have to defend, and keeping particular hallways well-defended would be critical to your combat capability.[/quote]

Oh to be able to vote multiple times.... GREAT idea matey... What about forcefields at the ends of corridors? Heavier dependency on the shield room to maintain internal and external shields... would help protect the important supply chains and could have an affect on main shield regen.. ?

Teleport to other ships to take me out from the inside out.
More focus on having teams possibly a warrior class
As some of the future updates state more tactics
I love this game and am very excited by what is to come.
Keep up the steam

I like the mini-games. I thought I would hate them, but they're a good balance of frustration vs reward. The torpedoes are easy mode, the laser is not too hard, and the machine gun is tough to get a perfect shot out of, but that's offest by the fact that it's easy enough to consistently do more damage than the lasers with it .

Adding some tactical choice to targeting would be nice - the ability to slow their weapons fire or take down their teleport facility would be interesting.

Not sure about rock-paper-scissors. For there to be strategy, the player has to make meaningful decisions. As the game currently sits, only your initial choice of weapons would become meaningful by adding rock/paper/scissors mechanics. After that, changing weapons is such a big investment that it probably isn't worthwhile unless it signifies a change in your combat strategy through the entire game.

Likewise, as things stand, there's almost never any benefit in holding back a charged weapon - the only exception I know of is to use a weapon with weak individual hits (machine gun) to break shields so that a torpedo doesn't lose 50 damage breaking down 10 units of shield. This is only a brief fragment of most battles, and the damage gain right now isn't overwhelming.

I think that rock/paper/scissors mechanics might want to wait until more meaning can be derived from it. For instance, give players a reason NOT to fire a charged weapon. Say a player wants to shut down teleport capacity in the enemy, and lasers disable systems best. If lasers charge faster when the second weapon is fully charged, (fewer weapons recharging at once,) that gives the player a reason to ignore their other guns and fight with lasers only - it helps them shut down their enemy's teleport capacity, and though the battle runs longer, they may prefer a longer battle without enemy boarding parties.

Even if your torpedos were better at hull damage, and your machine guns better at shield damage, you are still usually better served by firing your torpedos immediately - the only exception would be when the shields were nearly down, and your machine gun nearly recharged, which is only a brief fragment of most battle.

Lastly . . . I'm a relatively new player, so there may be more subtle mechanics that I'm still overlooking. If I'm missing something, please don't hesitate to point it out.